Cold Fish

 

A strong and chilling Japanese thriller where extreme gore, pure black comedy, suspense and a compelling story come together in order to create a worthwhile shocking movie to consider.

In the likes of The Untold Story(1993), Cold Fish parallels Mr.Shamoto's quiet yet dramatic life, until he and his family in a twist of faith encounter a middle aged business rival; Mr.Murata. They are both tropical fish sellers, but it becomes clear that Murata has a better shop.

Not only that, the energic salesman happens to be quite enthusiastic about their sudden meeting at a supermarket, and he decides to keep in touch. And by keeping in touch, he eventually succeeds in letting Shamoto's daughter work for him and letting his wife discuss the future of Mikuto, the daughter at Amazon Gold.

Instead, he enters the dilemma of the family and proceeds by raping Shamoto's wife, and who knows what Murata does with all of his workers under him. After attempting to make Shamoto his new business partner, the quiet protagonist gets the shock of his life when he becomes an accomplice during a business meeting, where he is ordered to take the numb body to a hidden shack.

There, Mr.Murata and his vicious and maniac wife slaughter the whole body of a former business partner into flesh and bare bones, and proceed to eliminate both, thus making the person "invisible". And this is all happening at a fast pace in just around 40 minutes in while the whole movie is about 150 minutes.

Murata keeps making the life of Shamoto especially a living hell, by blackmailing and abusing him. We never get to know much about Shamoto, but is is clear that he is a coward and is clueless about solving difficult issues.

After the latest "invisible" events, Murata provokes and judges Shamoto's whole life so much that the latter finally goes into a rage and during a twisted fuck between Murata's wife and Shamoto, he heavily wounds both of them by the use of a pen, and has taken matters into his own hands.

I must say that he performance of Murata is deliciously enjoyable to watch and like the villain in I Saw the Devil or Anthony Wong in his CAT III movies, he is a worthy and memorable man you will love to hate.

Anyway once Murata is dead, Shamoto becomes the new Murata and brutally controls his wife and daughter while Murata's wife is his as well. In the end he became a worthy successor after all, but decides to suicide in order to end the pain. This is Shion Sono's best yet.

Rating: 7.5